What's a Vendor from the Production Perspective?

At first I thought talking about vendor relationships would be easy. I would just talk about setting up your partners for success with context and preparation. But in writing this, I am thinking that the relationship from the production perspective is actually more complicated. Especially now that our products and deliverables are so complex. 

When someone asks my advice on what to look for in an LSP (localization service provider), I like to say it's about the relationship with your account manager or project manager. Companies in general don't like to constantly change vendors. It takes time to get a vendor on-boarded. They need to understand your business, branding, and priorities. Vendors need time to learn to speak your language. The time and money invested in a great vendor relationship is not something you want to do year after year or even project by project. 

What I wanted to delve into here is something I've spoken about in the past, which is being a good client. For me, this is elevating your vendors to partners and including them in the conversation early. In addition, identifying the partners that are required for the new globalization landscape: production houses, advertising agencies, and dubbing houses. Anyone and everyone that takes your initial product or message and alters it appropriately for specific markets. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention tips for the vendors. It must be especially challenging to understand a client’s day to day when you may not be on-site or receive all of the context surrounding a project. 

LSPs have been in the localization business for a long time but what about these new partners on the scene? I speak to people all the time who I feel are in the localization business but they would never consider themselves to be part of our industry. This is where my production mindset kicks in.

Complex projects creates an increase in the moving pieces involved. You have production vendors, advertising agencies, marketing companies and subtitling services. If there is content attached to the text, then you need to reach out to more specialists who can take your product global. 

Production companies, for example, produce the images for various marketing projects. These images are often versioned appropriately for each market to showcase the differences on product functionality.

Advertising agencies and marketing companies may manage a global campaign and may be required to create different commercials for each market because the overall concept will not but understood by the various consumers.

Dubbing houses and subtitling firms are adding voiceovers and subtitles to allow visual content to be understood by the individual consumer for whatever language they speak.

Since most companies work on a global scale, the people who version the content or products are all in the localization business; in my humble opinion. For more information on that please see my last article on stakeholders. 

It seems logical that we would want to set up all of our relationships up for success but what does that really look like from a production perspective? 

Here are some questions that I would ask myself if I was the client: 

1.  How do I communicate with my vendor? 

2.  Do my tools allow me to provide appropriate context to my vendor? 

3.  Am I giving my vendors enough time to complete the project? 

4.  Have I provided enough context for my vendors to understand how to execute the project? 

I actually love it when I work with people who know my project requirements better than I do. When vendors are so familiar with the specific requirements for our projects and begin catch my mistakes before the content goes live. It is a great feeling to know that your partners are there to compliment your own work and make you look your best.

What about the vendors themselves? I have been both a client and a vendor (which I’m sure is the same for most of you) and, as a vendor, I want to make sure that I can speak to my client’s needs as if they were my own. 

Here are some questions I like to ask myself when I am working for a client: 

1.  Have I identified all of the key stakeholders?

2.  Is the style guide current and comprehensive? 

3.  Am I articulating my needs? 

4.  Do I know what information I’m missing? 

5.  Do I have all of the tools I need to do my best work? 

6.  Have I budgeted enough time to complete this project? 

Clients take years to build their companies, products, and brand. Vendors are expected to jump in and save the day. They carry out these extra functions as if they had spent the same amount of time with these elements. As clients, I think it’s a great idea to remember that the best vendors are waiting in the wings anticipating your next request. The best clients are those who share as much information as they can and trust that the vendor is there to support them by evolving as they evolve. 

The evolution of this relationship also depends on if these two (client and vendor) can grow at the same rate. Technology is always improving and reinventing. Industry challenges are going to grow in complexity. It’s the ability to be flexible and willingness to grow that remains the biggest hurdle. Clients may require more languages, faster services, content heavy changes and/or have original content requirements. 

There is always the opportunity for a client to bring a service in-house. But in this climate of leaner organizations, I don’t see that being a big risk. In today’s business great clients focus on what they are good at and bring in additional services on an as-needed basis. 

All that said, how do you actually grow WITH your client? If you are an expert in all things client, then you know what challenges they are up against. You know what technology advancements are coming and can assume that your client will become more successful and perhaps need their vendors to wear more hats or they will go elsewhere, and no one wants that.